Although I only own a point-and-shoot right now, I have been itching to buy myself a reasonable mid-end DSLR. I have been seriously looking at the D5000, for both it's capabilities and it's price bracket.

I would also like to use it for HD video, including camera tracking. (I'm an animator by profession) Bottom line is, the rolling-shutter problem might be a deal-breaker for me!

I can see this forum has some thoughtful, knowledgable people on it, so I would really appreciate some advice.

Are there any other Nikon SLR's that use a global shutter, thus (apparently) eliminating the rolling shutter issue?Are there any fixes in the works for this problem?I know about the Foundry plug-in fix....does this work well enough for camera tracking?

And finally....(don't kill me for this one)

Are the any non-Nikon DSLR's in the D5000 price range that do not suffer from a rolling-shutter in their HD video capture?

Any and all advice is more than welcome, like I say, I believe there are some awfully smart folks on here!

So far, only the D3S is said to have made a substantial improvement to the rolling shutter problem. Can't recall how they did it since it is still CMOS, but they are said to have done something to make it ~50% better.

I saw a side by side test of all the Canons and Nikons (prior to D3S) on Vimeo and even the Canons definitely had the problem too (5Dmkii and 7d). They were a certain amount better but by no means were the Canon's perfect. I don't know the low to mid-end Canon's performance.

Thanks Steve....I am going back and forth between a few cameras...but I am settling on the nikon d5000, for various reasons.Does anybody know if using a higher speed shutter while shooting video has any (positive) effect on the rolling shutter problem?

When the Nikon D5000 is making a video, it is not using its mechanical shutter to make the exposures. Even a short video has thousands of individual exposures. It would wear the mechanical shutter out in an hour or two of video, if it were using it.

Here is a short excerpt from my book, Mastering the Nikon D5000, due out on December 15th:

"Since video is captured at 24 frames-per-second (fps) the D5000 has an electronic shutter in addition to the normal mechanical shutter.

Have you ever used your D5000 in Continuous release mode where you are capturing up to 4 still images per second? The mechanical shutter activation combines with mirror movement to make this cool “chicka-chicka-chicka” machine-gun sound that causes passersby—with their little point & shoot cameras—to look at you in awe. However, you don’t hear that sound when using the D-Movie mode, do you? That’s because your D5000 does not use the mechanical shutter when shooting movies. If it did you would wear the camera’s shutter out with only an hour or two of video capture. Remember, the camera captures video at 24 fps. An hour of video requires 86,400 frames at that speed. You would quickly exceed the “tested” lifetime 100,000 image capacity of the mechanical shutter.

Instead, the camera uses its electronic shutter capability and turns the sensor’s pixel rows on and off, as needed, in a scan from top to bottom. In other words, the camera records each video frame by scanning it—one line at a time—from top to bottom. Not all parts of the image are recorded at exactly the same time! This can produce a skewed and/or wobbly video with rapidly moving subjects like a race car or flying bird. This is called a “rolling shutter.”

So, no matter what shutter speed you have your D5000 set to, it ignores the setting when using D-Movie mode. Interestingly, you CAN control the aperture, and depth of field, on the D5000 when making movies. It's undocumented by Nikon, as far as I can tell, but my book tells how.

>Instead, the camera uses its electronic shutter capability and>turns the sensor’s pixel rows on and off, as needed, in a scan>from top to bottom. In other words, the camera records each>video frame by scanning it—one line at a time—from top to>bottom. Not all parts of the image are recorded at exactly the>same time! This can produce a skewed and/or wobbly video with>rapidly moving subjects like a race car or flying bird. This>is called a “rolling shutter.”>

Thanks Darrell,

The explanation about reading the sensor in rows explains a few things!